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From Up On Poppy Hill

Wendy Ide

August 2 2013, 1:01am, The Times

The latest film from the celebrated Japanese animation house, Studio Ghibli, From Up On Poppy Hill is adapted from a screenplay by the great Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) but directed by his son, Goro Miyazaki. The setting is the coastal community of Yokohama, the year is 1963, in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Teenagers Umi and Shun band together to save the school clubhouse but, as romance blossoms, they discover that they may share more than a passion for conservation. While visually it’s rather charming — a densely detailed love letter to a simpler time — tonally, it’s rather more problematic. The film is not just nostalgic, at times it feels like propaganda for the past. The sexual politics are rather dubious: the…